But a new study illustrates that being the office gossip does come with a dark side. To find out how gossipers were perceived by others, researchers asked 128 participants to complete a questionnaire rating various personality traits of a person they knew who was either a prolific gossip or particularly close-mouthed. Because the word has negative connotations for some, ‘gossip’ was never used. Instead the participants were told to think of someone who “spent a lot of time (or little time) talking about other people when they were not around.”